


Unrequited

by Anonymous



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Curse of the Black Pearl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-21
Updated: 2009-10-21
Packaged: 2017-10-02 13:09:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unrequited love is not ecstasy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unrequited

Will has loved her ever since she can remember. England seems so far away, so long ago, across the Atlantic; it is as though she was born on the crossing, and as if Will were too, birthed by the salt sea and the flames of the pirated ship. As if they are twins, and while she loves him, she loves him like a brother, cannot imagine that he will ever leave, ever not be there, ever not love her.

She doesn't even need to say it, it simply is. When Estrella suggests, "that Will Turner, he's a fine match too," she looks up sharply in surprise that any woman could be interested in Will like that. She realizes, a moment later, that Estrella probably thinks Elizabeth herself in love with Will, and nearly chokes on a hysterical giggle. The idea is absurd, and she sends the girl away, to laugh in peace.

It's not until the day Jack Sparrow doesn't hang that she realizes that Will loves her, not as a sister, but as— she can barely believe it. The idea's ridiculous, ludicrous, meaningless, but it seems, nevertheless, to be true.

She can't bear to see him hurt. Not by her, not when she could prevent it, and she marries him. She kisses him, and he looks so happy that she tamps down her regret for the narrow, even seams of James Norrington's uniform and his eyes, green like fields she can't quite remember. She marries William Turner, and tries to be happy.

He comes to her, one day, three years after the wedding, and asks, "Do you love me?" like a child, the child they have not had, and her heart breaks.

"Of _course_ I love you," she says, but it's not the answer he wants, even though it sounds like it. He smiles, and turns away. She drops her head into her hands in shame.

She may love him. She _does_ love him. But he loves her, in a way she can't return, in a way she doesn't know how to return, and that is not fair.

* * *

He is not quite a brother, not quite a father, not quite a friend. Not quite anything— she never spares him a thought to define him. He's simply there, always there, never worth a thought, a glance, a smile.

He cannot give her the pretty things she loves, cannot dote on her as her father can, cannot cast longing glances her way as the boy can— really, who does he think he's fooling?— and he fades into the borders of her awareness, always there, always watching, but never interesting.

He watches her, always interested. She grows up like a kaleidoscope, dizzying him with her glittering changes, her transformations in shape, in form, in color, always beautiful, always dazzling, never his.

She grows up and he grows older. He gets promoted and she congratulates him. She calls him captain, commander, commodore, never, not once, James. He grows used to powdering his wig. He is older than she by a full fifteen years, and looks more, in the white hair and with his hat shadowing his face, eyes already darkened by command, skin darkened by sun. His shoulders ache under the weight of brocade sewed to his epaulets, or perhaps it's the weight of responsibility; of guilt.

He asks her to marry him. She doesn't answer; and then she does. She answers, and it's almost worse than no answer was; he offers to retract the question. She answers again, and he can't hold back his smile, the unaccustomed curve of his mouth and half-closing of his eyes, the brilliantly golden feeling of relief in his shoulders and his veins and trembling behind his ribs.

And then he loses her. He loses sight of her in the moonlight and the darkness and the gun smoke, and then her father bundles her off home. He loses track of an assignation on the fort in the bureaucratic rush of Sparrow's trial, and he loses her to Turner when he loses Sparrow off the wall of the bloody fort, and he _loses_.

He's lost.

He drifts through Port Royal. He doesn't call on the Turners; he glances over his papers and charts and maps and leaves them stacked on his desk; he is vaguely polite to everyone and no one sees him.

She doesn't see him. She's happy, and he's pleased for her— he would never wish her unhappy, and while he wishes she were happy with him, he doesn't begrudge her anything. He doesn't wish her ill at all. He loves her, and she doesn't love him.

She doesn't think of him. This is fair. He thinks of nothing but, and this is balance. This is fair.


End file.
